The disclosure relates, in general, to self-assembly of building blocks and, more particularly, a system and method for guided self-assembly of magnetic building blocks including stable radicals.
Self-assembly is a promising and non-invasive strategy for parallel fabrication of heterogeneous functional systems made of various microstructures. Several self-assembly studies utilizing principles such as fluidic force, surface energy, magnetic force, gravity, electrostatic force, or capillary force have been presented for multiple applications. These self-assembly methods are often massively parallel, and thus, less expensive and faster than deterministic methods such as robotic assembly. However, assembly precision and yield are not as high as serial pick-and-place assembly owing to the probabilistic nature of self-assembly. To increase the yield of the assembly, excessive numbers of components were used within the assembly regions. Therefore, redundant mass fabrication of microstructures is required in most fluidic self-assembly methods, and there is an unmet need to develop efficient and inexpensive self-assembly methods merging the advantages of high-yield deterministic assembly and high-throughput self-assembly.
In general, microcomponent manipulation strategies using magnetism are versatile, contactless and inexpensive. In most of these strategies, magnetic micrometer-scale or nanometer-scale beads are used. Commercial magnetic beads are made of mainly iron oxide with minor amounts of other elements such as nickel and cobalt encapsulated in a polymer shell. Because of the risk of heavy metal poisoning, use and release of such magnetic beads in clinical applications have to be proven.
Therefore, there is a need for development of alternative beads that are potentially heavy metal-free for biological applications.